Mark Duplass

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And then the third thing was:

I can't believe Ted Danson's insecure. Yeah.

He's scared.

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name. Today I had the best time talking to writer, actor, and filmmaker Mark Duplas.

You know him from projects like The League, The One I Love, and The Creep Films.

He can currently be seen on The Morning Show on Apple TV Plus, and season two of The Creep Tapes begins streaming on November 14th, exclusively on Shutter and AMC Plus. Here he is, Mark Duplas.

Okay,

here's just to catch up for other people to catch up is I met you

up in Ojai and Mary's in my home. And I think that's where we actually met because you were producing and acting in

a film called The One I Love, directed by Mary's son, Charlie McDowell. Yes.
And Elizabeth Moss was in it.

And I had a little part. I was in it too.

You were. You were.

And what just blew me away? There's so many things to talk about, but

your model, I had never heard of your and Jay's model of producing producing a film, making a film.

Here's what I heard. So I don't know if it's true and if it's okay to mention how much you actually sell it.
Absolutely.

Because you could turn around and sell it for way the fuck more. So I think Charlie was saying, don't tell everybody.
That's okay.

Because that model is dead.

That doesn't work anymore. So if we can talk about it.
Because America, you just don't.

You don't sell them for as much anymore. So it's not like we're saying something that's a current business model that we would spoil.
All right. So it was $100,000.
It was.

You paid everybody on this set X amount. I don't remember, but it was.
It was $125 a day. And that was mandated because

the actors union for that budget level requires that you make at least $125 a day.

So we took this sort of socialist approach that said, well, okay, so everybody on set should make that, whether you're the director or whether you're the movie star or whether you are the PA or the sound person.

Everybody's going to make $125 a day, period. And then some people will get a little more back end.

Elizabeth Moss. But everybody gets back end.
Everybody gets back end. Yeah.
Some get more than others because, you know, it's fair. Elizabeth Moss was a huge star on Mad Men at that point.

And so we gave her a big chunk of the back end. And probably your DP.
Exactly. Yeah.
Right.

And the people whose house you were filming in, I think they were a lot of people. They got a lucky,

I don't know. No, I don't.
I think we got an eighth.

An eighth of a point. But you lost that much in all the oranges that my kids took off your trees when they came to visit.

They made so much orange juice.

Everybody who would come visit us and stay in our guest house would look at it and stop and go, oh, shit. Maybe I don't want to stay here.
That's right. Because the guest house is where the magic and

all the bad, not good stuff, bad stuff happens. Some of the nefarious stuff.
Yeah.

Okay.

All right. And yeah, that's, we had sort of grown grown up, um,

I guess, for lack of a better word, just as outsiders of this industry. And we never felt like, oh my God, there's no way I'm going to be able to make our way in here.

No one's ever going to like want to read my script or anything like that.

And so we always just thought, well, we'll just start making things until eventually one day, hopefully we'll get one into like the Sundance Film Festival or something and somebody will start to pay attention.

And that's what we did through our teens and through our 20s. And that was

that was our first short was a short film called This Is John. And it was a big creative breakthrough for us because

we were really struggling as artists in our 20s. I think

there's this conflation of like, this is the art that I like to watch. And so you start to make art like the art that you like to watch.

But a lot of times that's not who you are and that's not who your voice is. And so we were trying to make art like the Cohen brothers because we were like, we love the Cohen brothers.
They're great.

But we weren't good at that. And it wasn't until we sort of had this,

I mean, really an accidental breakthrough in my brother's kitchen where I improvised this eight-minute short film about a guy trying to perfect the personal greeting of his answering machine.

And it was the ugliest, worst-sounding short film to ever get in a sundance. It was our parents' video camera with a dead pixel in the center.

It's just my brother filming me, no, no lighting, no sounding, no nothing, you know? And that was our movie that got into Sundance.

And so I like grabbed that as one who is desperately trying to feel relevant does. And I said, I'm just going to use this as my microcosm to move forward.

So then we made the Puffy Chair, which was like a $10,000 micro-budgeted feature and had this awesome journey where this is like 2005,

where, you know, for those of you who know the industry, back then,

what was happening is you'd make a movie at like a Sundance and then you'd hope to go to like Fox Searchlight or Focus Features and make a movie like Sideways or Juno that would ideally go out and win the Academy Award.

And so I showed up at Searchlight and I was like, I'm ready. Let's go.
After the great reception. Yeah, after the great reception of the puffy chair.
And I did make a couple of movies.

We made this wonderful movie, Cyrus, with John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill.
Very fun. And Jeff Who Lives at Home with Susan Sarandon and Jason Siegel.

And I was able, my brother and I were able to make what we wanted to make, but we had to really

take some dings to the spirit and the soul to do it. Both those two that you just mentioned, you wrote we wrote and directed them.
Directed. Yeah.
Produced. Yeah, the whole shebang.

But it was with like, you know, like seven to ten million dollars of other people's money. You know, it was like the first time we were doing studio stuff.
And

just

the amount of, not just the notes that you get, but the amount of talking and explaining of every idea and having to justify what you do and fighting for certain things and the cut that you want to get done.

It was pretty clear. My brother and I kind of looked at each other after those two movies and we were like, okay,

we can do this. It's working, but I don't think we're going to last.
Like, I think, you know,

we're giving out more in our spirits that are being fulfilled. And I think that burnout is coming.
So

what are we going to do here?

And we got really honest with ourselves and sort of said, I just miss when we were making the puffy chair and I miss when we were making Baghead when it was like, I was cooking breakfast for everybody in the morning.

We were all shooting in the same house and sleeping in the same house and I was hanging lights and I just felt so young and

it was just, that's just who we are. So we said, well, why don't we go back?

What if we just did that?

So we started making movies again for this time at like $100,000. And the one I love was very much like a third or fourth movie in that zone.

And I would say one of our most successful films in that movie, people continually stop me for and talk to me about it. Oh, it's fantastic.
They really, and it's a testament to

Charlie, your, your son-in-law and Justin. They, you know, I,

I was at that point where I was like, guys, I'm going to give you $100,000. I brought them this idea because I always love the movie Starman.

I don't know if you ever heard this, but this was my instinct. I was like, okay, I'm starting with Starman.
Here's my idea. There's a couple.

couple they're having an argument um she decides she's gonna go sleep in the other room when she goes in the other room she finds her husband in there has a conversation with him he's acting different that's weird she comes back into her bedroom but her husband's still in the other room the essence of the movie but no plotting you know and i was like guys if you can come up with a fleshed out version of this um i'll help you bring a movie star i'll pay for it let's go and justin later and they and justin later and like i used to make that pitch to everybody because everybody was romanticizing how jay and i were doing things but they didn't realize how much work and how much free work they were going to have to do in order to get it.

And Charlie and Justin were one of the few who came back quickly with something great. And I was like, oh, shit, this is

we're going. Yeah, we're going.
Yeah.

I loved it when we came to the house and you were shooting. Charlie said, I'm sorry, but you can't stay here.
You have to check into a motel. There was no

space. There's no space.
I was in your room. I'm pretty sure I was in your room.
You could have come and snuggled with me. I, I, well, now we have one of your bigger budget films.

I'm not going to let you ask the next question.

You're in charge, but I'm coming in hot with something and I need to do it. Okay, but then we're going to go work backwards, but you go first.
Okay. All right.
So

there's a story that I tell out in the world. And like most stories that you tell over and over again, I think it gets hyperbolized and heightened and sharpened.

Especially if you're a good storyteller, which you are. Exactly.
So I'm going to tell you a story that I I tell everybody when they ask me about what's Ted Danson like.

Yeah, look me in the eye and tell me the truth. How many people have really asked you what Ted Danson is? They do.
They asked me about it. I don't know.
I said, How many? Oh, how many? Was this once?

This was, I've told this story. I'm going to, I mean, I think I've, I think I've told this maybe 15 times.
Okay, that's 15 people. All right.
Yeah, it's about 15, which is about what you're good for.

Yeah.

And

so, so, this is the story. This is the story, everyone.

We're going to make the one I love. It turns out beautiful.
Six months later, we get accepted to the Sundance Film Festival.

And for one reason or another, Charlie is starting to realize that a lot of his friends and loved ones are not going to be able to be there due to some limitations of their schedules and whatnot.

And he calls me and he asks me, was it really important that I had my parents there? Because he had heard all about that stuff at the Puffy Chair Premiere. Was that something important?

And I said, you know, it's really nice to share. It was a seminal moment for us.
And he said, yeah, yeah, I thought so.

And so we're leading up to the festival and I'm not thinking about it. And

Ted's on CSI. I mean, they own him.

They bought him out for a pretty penny. They did indeed.
Yes.

And when they say you jump,

you know, that's it, you know? And Ted is going to be very much shooting through the Tuesday night of our premiere at Sundance.

What I don't know at the time is that Ted goes to the producers of CSI and says, I really need to be here for my son-in-law.

I think he needs me there. And they say, well, that's great, Ted, but tough shit because look at your paycheck.

So then he goes to the line producer who he knows well and is like, do you think there's a way you could probably carve me out of this schedule?

Because I feel like while there are no commercial flights available, if you can get me out at 6 p.m., I can get on a private plane. I can be there for the QA.

I can be there for the after party, which is not going to start until about 11 p.m.

I can stay all the way through the after party casually, just there as a support system

for Charlie, as if I have nowhere to be.

And then hop on a private plane a few hours later and be back there for work the next day.

And

that's the Ted Danson that I tell the story about. How close am I?

This is sad.

Remind me who you are. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's quite possible. It's quite possible.
Yeah. I mean, and I like the story, so I'm going to go, yes.

But now Charlie will, if he ever does listen to one of these podcasts, will go, no, you didn't, or maybe, but I think that's roughly true. I can corroborate a few things.
Private jet?

You outlasted me at that party for sure. And I was like, how is Ted here?

And if I was at that party, I would be so nervous about the sleep I was losing and getting to the, and you were just like,

so casual and calm and just there for him. And at that time in my life, I had, my kids were

seven and three. And I remember, I just have to say it.
I remember looking at you and just being like, this is how I want to do it. Well, I I love that.
Yeah. Thank you.
And I hope to God it's true.

I hope to God it's as, you know, you stated.

Can we back that? Let's back. Thank you.
Yeah. And by the way, you can cut this out too.
You can just go right back. No, no, it was a good story about me.
We're keeping it.

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You're talking as if you came out full-blown

producers, writers, directors, artists in this town trying to figure out how to make it in this town.

How did you even get to the point from Louisiana or Austin and being in a band, which I listened to, by the way? Oh, boy. Pretty cool.
Okay. All right.
Yeah.

So, great question.

Because, yeah. I grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans with my brother, just the two of us, four years apart.

He's four years older, even though he looks 10 years younger, which really pisses me off, but we're working on that.

And we were of the generation

where HBO was magically piped in around 1983 or 1984. I'm like seven or eight years old at this point.

And it probably the most definitive curational force in my life was the fact that I would come home from school at 3 o'clock. HBO was not thinking about what time to air things.

They just had a bunch of movies and they threw them up there. So at 3.30, I'd roll in.
I'd catch the second half of Kramer versus Kramer.

I'd roll right into Sophie's Choice and then I'd catch some Annie Hall. And I was getting all this incredible adult programming.
You and Jay? Jay and I, yeah, both of us. Yeah.
We would, you know,

we were, we were deeply affected by

adult post-divorce ennui

at a very young age. You know, we just, we, we loved it.
And we always thought, God, okay,

I kind of want to be creative. I kind of want to figure this out.
But there were no models for filmmakers.

And, and while there probably were independent filmmakers in that post-John Cassavetes area, like we, there's no internet. We have no access to this.

So the only model I can see of a successful artist are these sort of troubadour, like blues, jazz, and funk musicians that have their residencies in New Orleans.

And they play, they play Monday night and they make 200 bucks. And so I was like, music.
That's going to be the thing. But artists.
Yes, right. And so we're just like, let's do this.

So we started, you know, taking drum lessons and then we picked up guitar and started playing that.

And Jay and I were playing in bands together and nothing particularly special, but developing our creative process, learning how to write songs, you know, playing gigs at little coffee shops, seeing that songs aren't working that well, going back, workshopping them, all the all the stuff that kind of leads up to, you know, a life in the arts.

Then in 1991, Jay got a scholarship to go to the University of Texas in Austin.

The lid got blown off because our world really opened up. I'm 14, Jay's 18.
And tied to the hip, right? You guys tied to the fucking hip. He loves you.
This is my guy.

And all credit to Jay, what little brother doesn't want to hang out with the older brother, Jay was the one who included me. And he got some stuff from it.
He got pure, unadulterated

adoration.

He was also at the time, I think, you know, a little more nervous and unsteady in the world. And I was a little more bombastic and confident.

So we had a nice little combo, a little Mutton Jeff thing there.

But when he went to Austin

and we started to see Richard Link Later and Robert Rodriguez

taking $7,000 of credit cards or selling their blood and making their movies and they didn't look like

Jean-Luc Godard.

They didn't have a beret. They were wearing ratty t-shirts and tennis shoes and jeans, and they looked like post-high school athletes like us.

And I was like, oh, shit. I don't have to smoke a skinny cigarette to be a filmmaker.
Like, I can just be who I am. That was huge.
And you're in Austin, too.

And I am living in New Orleans still with my parents. But communicating.
But communicating. And literally, I get my license at 15 in New Orleans.
So by my freshman year, Jay had left his car home.

I'm driving up to Austin 500 miles every other weekend just so I can be with him, see this world, have my mind blown. So I spend the next three years.
So you are, sorry, you're on track full on.

This is what I'm going to do. Without declaring it, maybe, but this is what you're going to do.

I think we've pretty much declared, we've pretty much declared that like it's going to be a life in the arts.

Now, I'm pragmatic. I grew up Catholic.
I went to this really high

Jesuit school. It was a very pressure cooker thing.
And all those guys went to,

you know,

they graduated from college and they were making really good salaries. And so

I got a lot of good academic rigor out of that school. And I did learn eventually how to apply that structure and rigor to my creative process.
And that's been huge for me.

It's just like those ridiculous study rules, those times when you're just like, I can't even imagine doing this.

When I turned around and had kids in my late 20s, and I was like, I only have two and a half collective hours today, which is their three naps spread out to be creative. Jesuit prepared me.

Just like, well, that's what you do. You're going to get fucking organized.
And, like, one of those is going to be while you're exercising, you're going to be thinking about what you're doing.

And then you're going to go ahead and write it down. And then you're going to be walking around with the baby in the Bjorn, talking out the rest of the script into a dictaphone.

Like, I just, that, that was really good for me. Um, but I didn't know any of this when I'm 15 and Jay's 18.
I'm just like, I want to live a life in the arts somehow. Yeah.

So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to college in Austin with Jay

and I'm going to get a degree in English literature. I love reading and I'm going to plan on being a professor who loses money making his art.

That was, that was literally the goal because I could, I could see that as practical. I was like, yep, I can like make enough.
to do that.

Yes, you know, and I'll, and I'll, and I'll make my, you know, $72,000 a year and I'll, they send you wherever you go as a professor.

You know, you get stuck out somewhere that maybe you don't want to be. And, and I'll just make independent films and music that loses money.
This is what I'll do.

And then something interesting happened, which is

the technology at the time of filmmaking started to shift. And we started being able to edit on computers on these avids.
And so Jay and I were like, whoa, we're here right now. I'm still in Austin.

Still in Austin. I'm 19.

Jay's 23. He's just graduated.

I'm still in school, but the Jesuit high school was so, they put us so far forward. I had

60, I think 62 hours of college credit before I even came into the school with my AP courses and everything. So I just, I was barely in school.

You know, I was just there because my middle class background dictated you should stay in school or else you've done something wrong.

And so we, Jay and I realized, okay, we can start to make money as editors here.

So I got a job and so did Jay for a while editing

a church television show. And I would work nights from like 9 p.m.
to like seven in the morning, two shifts a week, make enough money to, you know, cover my $250 a month in shared rent.

Was it the sermons or the, what were you editing?

Like, if you ever like, I don't know, this is like, this was in Texas, but like, you know, they, they would just, there was this big kind of mega church outside of town.

And yes, they would shoot, they would shoot the sermons and then they would also have little like side videos and they would say

skits or things. No, no, but there was some musicians that would show up.

And, um,

and, and they didn't have a lot of money and they were paying me $15 an hour, which at the time I was like.

This is a gold mine, you know, and then I didn't realize how much they were probably taking advantage of me, but still it worked.

But we got really good on the machine, got really fast. Then Jay and I decided, okay,

we're going to sell off the cars that we had, buy cheaper cars so we can buy an Avid, and we'll start an editing business. And then we started editing every film.
I'm so sorry. I'm such an airhead.

Avid, you're

you editing tape?

We're on computers for the first time, which is how we're getting this work because the older generation was good at tape and they got a little phased out.

And we were, you know, it was digital and new exactly.

Exactly.

Exactly. Thank you.
And so being, you know, I was only 21 at the time or so, but, but we were kind of at the forefront of it a little bit.

And we always said to ourselves, you know, this is great. We will use this to help make our own movies, you know.
Meanwhile, I'm still a musician at this point.

I'm still touring, you know, anywhere from 60 to 120 days out of the year. Some of it, I'm doing a singer-songwriter thing, just selling CDs out of the back of a van.

Sometimes I had, would have like a little label. Like, I had this band, Volcano, I'm still excited.

That was like, you know, moderately successful, but still like splitting $173 between three guys and sleeping on floors kind of thing. Colleges, bars.
That whole, that whole shebang. Yeah.

But I am,

you know, I guess I didn't really think about this. Like, I'm juggling two very unsustainable,

economically unsafe careers.

at once. Filmmaker, musician.
Exactly. That's my backup career.
So wait, wait a minute.

Something is not right here.

And it was somewhere around this time frame

where I think I started to develop what I call like my Sagliere moment with music.

So Saglieri was the guy who

was so obsessed with Mozart because he knew he would never be it. And I started to see musicians out there who were younger than me, who were working a lot less hard than I was.

And they were just really great.

And I was like, okay, I might be maxing out at a B minus here. And I don't know.
I love it. It's love my life, but I don't know if I want to live like this.
This may not be smart for me.

And luckily, at that time,

that was right around the same time. I met Katie, who's my girlfriend at the time, is now my wife.

And I started thinking, yeah, I also don't want to be out on the road touring. It's not good for the relationship.
And I was missing Jay when I would go out on the road. It just wasn't working.

And then technology intervened a second time for me, who's like this little technology has been like this little

ghost of Christmas past, present, and future that visits me as Scrooge throughout my life. I remember the lighting package that you came to our house with was minutes.
Nothing, nothing.

So what happened was, and I was, I was aware, because as a musician, I was 10 years too late with the technology.

They were making great sounding digital recorded records on their computer when I was 12. And by the time I got there, eh, it was kind of all used up.
Right.

And then when I'm like 26, this camera lands in my lap. It's the first digital camera that shoots things that look like film.
It only costs $3,000.

So now to make an independent film, as opposed to Link Later and rodriguez those guys are shooting on 16 millimeter or you know cassavetta shooting on 35 millimeter i can make a movie for the cost of a tape in this camera and they needed a big lighting package they needed a little bit of a bigger lighting package yeah back then digital and digital was less so so i so i was like all right jay well let's go for it let's do what we did let's let's buy the camera and then so we bought the camera and we were renting it renting it out to pay it off wait how much it was three three thousand dollars okay

we would rent it out for like 75 a day day, you know, just like continually just trying to get it paid off.

And

luckily that it, it was sort of the same time. I say luckily, maybe it was serendipity that we had made that first little cheapy short film I was telling you about that went to Sundance.

So I think that was the first time where I was like,

okay,

it's time. Like this is my excaliber moment.
I just pulled this camera out of the stone.

And if we're going to do this, you know, I've got a very sharpened sense of my artistic process through all those years, editing bad movies, making my own music.

I can still live off of $300 a month in my cheap apartment. I don't have the weight to carry of a family yet.

Let's fucking go. Like, this is going to be our time.
Okay, freeze. Yeah.
That's amazing, by the way. Thank you.
That's very cool.

So, not everybody gets to wake up and then have all of those desires and inclinations and talents and everything and determination just be at their fingertips. So can you look earlier?

Are your parents giving you anything that made you and your brothers able to be these kind of people? I think they're definitive in this process. Okay.
A couple of things. One,

a lot of these come with positives and negatives, but they're all definitive. Number one,

if there's one clear message I was raised with since I was little, it's you're incredible. You've got so many gifts and you can do anything.

What a gift that is. What an unbelievable gift.
Now, when you're 25 and you're not succeeding, it can lead to a high level of depression. What an anvil around your neck.

What an anvil around your neck. Exactly.
So my wife and I actually had a very concerted conversation. I remember we were up before we had kids late with a couple of bottles of wine.

I'm like, what are we going to do? Should we give them the praise? Or is that going to fuck them in the long run? Like, what do we do?

You know, and because they were both girls, we decided let's err on the side of praise.

But try to be,

but let's try to just give little doses along the way of like, you're incredible and it's amazing, but also can't wait to see what you do. Yeah, these are your, these are your gifts.

And if like you get to the point in your life where you just like want to like, you know, hang out and enjoy life and not have this insane ambition,

fine.

Because I tell them, like, ambition made me successful. It didn't necessarily make me happier.
So just be aware.

So anyway, so they did that for us, which was great. Both of them.
Both of them, yes. And then another thing they did, which I, you know, they didn't plan this.

They were, they were raised lower middle class and they were busy

trying to raise us up a class. My mother stayed home to take care of us.
My father got out of the draft by becoming an attorney. He was born in 45.

So that was that time where you could like go to grad school and get out of the draft. And he was like, I'm just going to try and,

I don't really like being a lawyer, but I want to raise my family up a class, you know, and I want to send them to school without college debt, which he did.

I want to be able to support them when they say they want to be artists, which he did.

So that was great. And then this, this, I guess, I mean, look, this is sort of in the zeitgeist right now a little bit, but

I say this

with full respect. They, they, we were summarily ignored

in our childhoods in terms of activity planning, in terms of any encouragement to do this or not do that. It was a general belief that you could, but also we're busy.

There's a couch and a television and a bike and a neighborhood and be home before dark.

And that sense of autonomy and that sense of no one's coming here to tell me what to do was really, really helpful for us. And I've tried to fabricate some of that for my children.

I don't know if i've done the best job different times a different time different city and they're girls and different cities you know yep yep um so those things were really really critical um and then i would say one thing that they really did that really impressed me was um

you know even as we were going in our mid-20s and

Yes, we were making enough money to subsist off of like $70,800 a year in Austin paying our rents, but still like on our parents' insurance, that whole thing.

They never said, it's time for backup plan, guys, you know? And my father, we, I'm very close with my dad. He's 80 now.

He is our business manager.

Oh, good. He, he, uh, I asked him when he was like 66.
He's kind of a workaholic like I am. He was still living in New Orleans, running his law firm.

And I just had my first kid, Aura. And I called him and I was like, hey,

we got to talk. I was like, we all know you're going to die at your desk and you probably die happily there.
But like, I got this pitch. Like, what if you retire right now?

And like, you could come move out to LA and like you'll know your grandkids. Like,

I knew my grandparents, but it was, I love you and a hug on Christmas and Easter. And

they didn't know me, you know? Your mom and dad together at that moment in your phone call? Yeah, and they're still together. Yeah.

And I was like, why don't you guys just, just think about it? You know, three weeks later, he shut down the law firm. Wow.
Moved out, got them a condo here, and they've been here ever since.

And it was such a funny moment. And this relates to, again, all those gifts and things that he gave us because

what I noticed in my father, once Jay and I got into our late 20s, early 30s, where we were making those studio movies, I was financially stable enough.

I noticed something something a little interesting about him. He was excited for us,

but he was not as excited to go to work anymore.

And I was like,

what's going on? And he's like, well, I always felt like if I encourage you guys to become successful artists, the price I had to pay with that was to never retire.

Cause if you never made any money, I felt like I needed to have a nest egg for you to take care of you because I

unabashedly supported you. And so his God was, let me go to work every day and save up for the boys.
And then when we, we, I get it, when we made the living, we destroyed his God.

And he was like, I don't know what to do with this. And it was such a weird existential moment for all of us.
And I was like, well, this is perfect. Like, come out.

Like, I'm supposed to hire a business manager out here that I pay 5% to. And I don't know if I can fully trust them.
You're so good with numbers. You're so organized.
You're so smart.

I also need like legal advice on some of my cheap movies. You can make cheaper little contracts for me me than the entertainment attorney.
So he kind of became our like conciliary out here.

But yeah, that little, that little sense of him

always being there. I knew if I was going to fall, I was never going to fall that far.

He just had me. That's very cool.
We need to give a little shout out to Katie at this point in your story, signing up, well, before this point in your story, signing up to be with you when it was

very fucking unsettled.

It's worse than you think. And what a wonderful actor, by the way.
Thank you. I'm going to tell her that, but she's going to listen to this and cry because she loves you so much.
Oh, there you go.

Okay, that's your second one. You have to do three before I really settle down, but thank you.

How did that happen? So we met in Los Angeles. I was living in New York.
She was living in L.A. I came out to visit a friend because I was just having a tough time.

And what I haven't mentioned through all of this, and it doesn't need to be any heavier than what it is, is that I've been dealing with anxiety and depression my whole life.

Much of this undiagnosed and unaware through my early days. Yes, high school, like having panic attacks and being like, I think I ate something wrong.
I don't know, you know, just no awareness. And

I'm in New Orleans in the 80s and 90s. Like, we're not, it's not on the radar for us, you know?

And so, um, so yeah, I was having a really hard time. I wanted to come visit a friend, happened to meet Katie, who was a friend of my friend out here.

Um, it was on New New Year's Eve going 2001 and 2002.

And she had sort of recently sworn off men due to some bad relationships. And I had sort of recently sworn off women.
That's what happened.

Sorry, just with parentheses, Mary and I had the exact same conversations with ourselves. You know, clearly I can fuck up any relationship.
Mary was. Obviously, I'm not relationship material.

Who knew? And we found each other. I'm no good for anybody right now.
I need to settle on myself.

And then, but we got hit with the lightning bolt, which I love the lightning bolt of love. It's, I tend to really trust it now.
I tend to really break down relationships into two categories, which is

not two categories, really two things. Like, do you like the way this person smells and tastes? And are you willing to work? Which is not a silly, that's science, by the way, what you just said.

Like, and that was it for us. I mean, it was just like, wow, you know, so true.
But to your previous point of good on Katie for

buying early and cheap and investing and holding on to her investment, I mean, not only was I completely unstable, you know,

had not gone to therapy yet

and really was emotionally, you know, not dialed in and volatile. And then

to top it all off, I had mutton chop sideburns and a soul patch.

So she had to kiss that face. Yeah.

It was a lot. I was smoking cigars.
I can't even fucking believe that Mary would have come anywhere near me. That's incredible.
It is. It was a test on my part.

Let me see if we can get this in here. Yeah.

Yeah. So she, and she was with me through, you know, this whole, this whole, this whole journey of all this stuff.
Yeah.

And your brother, just tap, we can nibble or do nothing about your anxiety and all of that stuff. Your brother was aware of what was going on with you as a kid and was,

eh, you're fine?

No, I wasn't communicating it to him. And he wasn't, he's dealt with it his fair share as well.
And he wasn't really communicating it to me. I think that it just wasn't in our vernacular, you know?

And we didn't even know how to identify it. You know, I would wake up in the morning.
I remember being like seven or eight years old and telling my mom, like, I'm, my stomach is so empty.

I'm starving. Did I skip dinner last night? And I didn't know that it was just depression.
And she didn't know it either, you know?

Now, Jay and I, to that point, though, have had

a long journey of intuitively leaning on each other. So while we weren't looking each other in the eye and saying, I've got your back, I know you're dealing with this.

It was just

like two lions in a pride who just knew what they had to do.

And we've always described it as once we knew we were going to try to do this thing, try to do the impossible to become artists with no connections.

There was never an ounce of conflict between us for for probably 20 years. It's a pretty magnificent relationship.
I remember hearing about the Duplas brothers before I heard about Mark or Jay. Yeah.

You were the Dupless brothers. Yeah.
And we were lockstep for, you know, literally from when we were, you know, five and nine years old up until about our mid-30s.

That must have been hard when you went your separate ways, right? Yes.

Who initiated? Well, your brother, right? So, yeah. So we're, you know, we are still the Duplas brothers under our company umbrella.
What have you produced most recently before this

going to separate? I would say probably,

oh, before the thing that sort of really helped precipitate us getting, I call it our conscious uncoupling.

Nice.

Was

our show Togetherness, which Mary was on with us

on HBO. Fucking great show.
Thank you. And she was great in that show.
She was great in it.

And that show almost killed us. Again, my kids, I shot that right after I met you shooting The One I Love.
Right.

We wrote and directed every episode. I starred in it.

My kids were three and seven. Jay's kids were two and six.

All the performance. And it was so wonderful.
And it was the peak of our, you know, creativity together. But at the same time, we were writing a book about ourselves.

We were producing all these other movies. I was really, really stretched thin, and so was Jay.

And I think Jay,

Jay has always been

a little bit wiser and a little bit more centered than I have been in our creative process, in life in general. And I'm so grateful for him that he has had that.

And he, I think he would tell you right now, he's so grateful that at those times I was less than centered because I was was such a driving force maniac that I,

there's no way we would have been successful without my engine revving the way it, the way it did. You know, I pushed him off of every cliff.
It was always, I don't know if we should do this.

And I was like, let's go, you know,

and, and it was, it was a beautiful, beautiful balance. But I think around this time, Jay started to realize.
And he had it tough, too.

He had the moment where I was an actor and he wasn't for a while. So every party we went to, every industry event,

all the eyes would go to me. And he sat in that for like 10 years.

And I think he was feeling, I need to individuate now. I think it's time for me to do something.

And, and what we've discovered even down the line, a few years down the line, is it wasn't just about him, you know, self in that self-oriented way, needing to individuate.

The ways we were going about making our art were starting to diverge. Jay was becoming hungrier and hungrier to create the one everlasting masterpiece movie or TV show.

Like, I'll spend 10 years on it to get it right.

And I was actually heading in the direction more through my experiences with Charlie, through my experiences with Lynn Shelton making movies of saying, you know what?

Jay and I might...

We might be starting to repeat ourselves as collaborators. But if I collaborate with a different different person for each project going forward, it'll feel half like me and half like them.

And that's probably good. And I, I don't know how you feel about this, but like

I'm not a crazy driven artist where unless my art is an A plus every time, I don't see the value in it.

If I can make some B pluses that some people like and some people don't and make more of them and enjoy the creative process and the being with them, that's where my focus started to go.

And I think that was hard for Jay because he's just like, dude, why are we stopping at a B plus?

We should destroy ourselves to make an A plus like we used to. And I was just kind of like,

I don't know. I've made like 50 or 60 movies and TV shows.
I want to make more of them.

I want to be in concert and creative communion with people, but I don't want to die at the foot, at the altar of this project. And Jay was very like, that's all I want.

Do you remember the artist's way that? Yes, of course. I can't, I'll butcher the quote, but it had something to do with your job is not to,

you know, to, your job is to be prolific. Yeah.
You let, you know, let the whatever it is, you know, often determine whether it's genius or not. And I have been,

I have been taught that through, through the responses to my projects. I remember, you know, thinking like, oh my God, togetherness is going to be like the Emmy winning show of all time.

And it did, and it did great. And there were people who loved it, but we didn't go out and win any awards.

And at the same time, I'm experimenting in documentaries, producing a documentary with these two young brothers who have only made one thing before. That's about this obscure cult in northern Oregon.

And I'm like, oh, this will be kind of interesting. And that show ends up becoming Wild, Wild Country, which is the most successful documentary on Netflix, the one that wins us the awards.

I haven't seen it, and I really wish I could sit here and validate it.

We don't have to do any of that. I've made so much stuff.
You shouldn't. No, no, I know.
But I love love hearing that. But to that point, to that point, I love, as an artist, my whole thing is like,

sound like Kevin Costner. I'm making a baseball metaphor.
Forgive me, guys. But here we go.
He's cool. He's cool.
Go for it. I step up to the plate and I'm like, okay.

I'm going to wait for the pitch that I feel like I can hit. I'm not going to try and hit a home run.
I'm going to swing my bat. I'm going to put it on the ball.

I'm going to sprint as hard as I can to first base and know that I can make it to first base. And then

that's each at-bat is a piece of art. And then randomly, one out of every 10 of those at-bats, they're going to overthrow me at first base and it's going to be an in-the-park home run.

And I won't have known why, but it will happen that way. And that's my whole philosophy.
And Jay, rightfully so, was like, I love that for you.

And now we've come to this beautiful place where, you know, we're a part of everything. His last movie, The Baltimore-ons, that he, it was the first movie he wrote and directed on his own.

We produced it. I financed for him personally so he didn't have to feel any of the pressure himself.
I was like, Let me put the money up. And like, you just go do it.

And I asked him, When do you need me? I'll be there. But, and he didn't have me breathing down his neck.
So we're kind of like rooting each other on from the same sidelines and on the same team.

And it's been really healthy until I come back next year and I'm like, whoa, we had a huge fucking fight.

I want my money back. I want my money back.
Yeah.

It's hard to

totally different, but when Shelly Long left Cheers

after five seasons, I thought, oh, fuck.

My dance, what if it's my dance partner and has nothing to do with me and the whole thing will fall apart? Have you talked to anybody about that?

Not yet. Yeah.

But

you mentioned it somewhere in some interview, I think. But that had to be a moment for you of, oh.
Oh, boy. Yeah.
I mean, you've described how it was beneficial for both of you. It was.

But in the moment, it must have been. Bigger moment for Jay, honestly, because at that moment, I had already had success in collaborations with people like Charlie

before that had happened. Jay was actually the one who pulled the trigger and then hung himself out to drive.
So he really put himself on the line for that.

And in this moment of time, none of my business question, were you in therapy yet?

Definitely. I started therapy.
So you were set. When I was like 28, I had a real,

I think it's fair to call it a nervous breakdown. Like I was experiencing the success of the puffy chair.
I finally achieved the zenith, which was to get a feature film at Sundance.

And I experienced it in the theater and it was beautiful. And I walked out of that theater

and I was like, uh-oh, I'm in trouble because I'm not happy now. I thought this was going to be it.
Yeah.

And this is one of the coolest things you can say, though, out loud, because this is just the massive truism in life of so many people.

Why? It's so funny. And I actually still fall into that trap a little bit.
It's not like I learned it once and I figured out I still mess up.

But that was really, really hard. And so I just started working harder and harder to like, I call it recalibrating the mountains.
Well, I'll just get some new mountains to climb.

And

then about a year after that, yeah, I had a pretty big nervous breakdown, was scared to take medication, was scared to to go to therapy,

did that whole process. For anyone of you who is interested in getting a therapist, I obviously highly recommend it.
But also, it's like dating, it can take a few to get the right one.

So that was really tough. Where I was like, I went and I was like, oh, this isn't working.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Just go on a couple more dates.
Like you'll, you'll find your person.

And then the big journey for me was like, can I take an antidepressant? and still be creative and still be vital and alive and is my anxiety a driver for my creativity or can I? Yes.

And it's there is no empirical answer for everyone. The good and the bad news for me is no matter how heavy the antidepressant I take, nothing's going to fully remove my depression and anxiety.

And it has not in any way impeded my creative process. It has actually made me way stronger.
And

I argue that this little bottom that I have, this little pillow of my lovely 20 milligrams of Selexa that I've been taking for 20 years.

It catches me almost, you know, and

it's given me a fortitude where

I can actually work really well and longer and smarter in a lot of ways.

I don't think we ever get rid of that, either that imprint or that wiring, whichever it is.

You know, you can get it to the point where, oh, I got it. I understand you.
I see you. Yeah.
And I know how to

continue living life. Hello, darkness, my old friend.

But

I remember you on the set of The One I Love, you know, and playing our therapist. And I remember watching you.
And I haven't said any of this here yet, but like you were in my kitchen my whole life.

My parents and I, we sat down and we watched cheers every night. And

we just love you so much and you brought so much to us. So I was a little nervous.
And I remembered you being very nervous.

And I remember my first thought was,

he's taking care of me. He's trying to pretend that he's nervous because he knows I'm scared.
And he's like,

he's modeling it. And that was, and then the second take was, wow, he's really good at this.
And then the third take was like,

I can't believe Ted Danson's insecure. Yeah.

He's scared. He's scared to improvise and he's nervous after every

improviser killer.

You know, when somebody would chase you up the stairway when you were young and you would get halfway up, you were still leading, but you'd freeze and scream. Yeah.

That's how I feel with improvisation. But you were so good.
We weren't doing comedic improvising. We weren't looking for jokes.
We were just making the naturalistic dialogue.

And you did settle into it and you found it. But that was good modeling for me, by the way, at the time.
I loved seeing you just say that out loud. You know, like you just, I'm nervous.

I'm I'm scared, I suck. I don't, you know, it was great.
Yeah.

It's, it's, it's a bit, I take it too far. I have this

false humility,

not nerves. I am always nervous.
It's, I'm always scared shitless before. I have no need to jump out of an airplane and skydive.
I'm terrified

before when they say action in a great way now.

Your life is Halloween horror nights. You do not need to go to the theme parks.
Yes.

Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway,

what a great business. Let's talk about acting for a minute.
Let's do it. You're a wonderful actor.
You really are. I've loved watching you act.

And

that's such a different, because usually

a lot of times people who write, produce, and act,

I don't totally believe that they've lost themselves in some character. I feel like there's an eye watching the whole thing.
And I don't see that in you. You're really good.
Thank you. All right.

Let's talk about

the creep. Yeah.
Not files. I'll keep creep tapes.
Creep tapes. Yes.
And I wrote it down. So sorry, but it's, it's, what is the phrase? Because I phrase, it's like well-known.

Shit, I can't.

Found footage horror. What? Yes, say it again.
Found footage horror. I had never said that, but it's been around.
It's been around, yeah. So, you know, about

25 years ago, the Blair Witch Project comes out. Yeah.
And the whole movie,

the conceit is that we are watching the videotapes that they were filming out in the woods and they died out there. And we have discovered these tapes and we're watching them.

And we all kind of believed it. And it destroyed us all.
And the movie made $100 million and it was great.

How long ago was this? This was 1998, 99, something like that.

Now we know that it's a format, but we still buy into it.

There's an intimacy about it, like a mockumentary in some ways, you know.

But here's why I love the form because my brain is always working in a combination of business and creative. They're perfectly in concert with each other at all times.

And I believe it's the reason why I'm still working today. It's the key to my sustainability, if not my success.

And when you're making found footage, it's supposed to not be well lit and the camera is not supposed to look expensive.

So you don't need any lighting crew. You don't need any sound crew.
When we go and make the creep tapes, which is a show we make for Shutter and AMC now. Second season's coming out.

Second season's coming out, yes, shortly, November 14th. Shortly.
Yep.

And I'm writing a third, I was literally writing the third season right before I came here.

And what that means is I get to make this show, the entire casting crew, five people. And they're all my good friends.
Oh, my gosh.

And then I get to hire my favorite actor that week who's going to come into my world and get themselves into trouble.

And the conceit of the show is you are the most prolific serial killer who's, I love this. It happens to be socially uncomfortable.
He's very socially uncomfortable. And it's using,

but just

it's one of the funniest. You know,

it is a horror comedy for sure. And what it is, is I built this character because I recognize something in myself, which is,

you know, I am what some people would call an early hugger. Like I'll meet you and I really like you and I might get a little too close and I might hug you before you're ready to to be hugged.
And

I get excitable and I get, I'm like a little boy and I, and I see a connection coming. And so I just lean in.
And I've noticed sometimes that I can make people a little uncomfortable with that.

So I just took that and I was like, what if I just fucking dial this up to like 15 and have fun with it and have my own therapy in the process?

And rather than try to have to tamp this thing down in myself all day long, I'll have three weeks a year where it's his Christmas and he just gets to let his freak flag fly.

And here's the best part about it. And yes.

And I'm a serial killer. Yes.

And the fun part about it, though, getting back to the process, which as I get older, like the process is almost as important as the product to me, you know, because what are we, what are we doing this for?

So what we do is you do work long hours. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. And so the conceit of the show is, you know, he'll hire someone to film him for the day under some false conceit.
And you'll start to realize, oh, this is probably a little bit of a lie.

And he always rents a different Airbnb or

what is the full conceit to the person he hires? I need you to hire

me doing what? The first film that we made for Netflix was, he says,

I have a brain cancer. My wife is pregnant.
I need you to make a film for me for my unborn son, like the beautiful movie, My Life with Michael Keaton.

That's his favorite movie that's ever been made. And slowly but surely, throughout the course of the day, this guy starts to catch me in a couple of little lies.
And then he loses his car keys.

Is he a character or is he just

a character? He's a character, too. How does he get on camera? But sometimes I take the camera.
Sometimes the camera gets set down, you know.

Because, you know,

my character fancies himself a bit of a filmmaker. You know, he's been around the lens.

And it's so fun to make, but

we go and because, you know, in order to not get caught, my character rents a different Airbnb each time so i literally go on airbnb i rent a place the five of us go up we live in it and shoot in it oh wait wait you mark do this yes i do this

yes and we shoot an episode every like two or three days you know and it's do they know you're gonna do that yeah i have to let them know legally you know um

but

but it's so it's great it's a it's a really cool process and and i think that to that point I made earlier about why I wanted to make a hundred thousand dollar movie with Charlie.

It's connected to that same thing that

I'm trying to say deeply rooted to that 14-year-old boy who showed up in Austin and saw Richard Link later for the first time doing a Q ⁇ A and that wild-eyed sense of wonder and sense of play.

That's really important to me.

But because I'm also a human being, I know that if I do too much of that, I'll start to complain and I'll start to say, God, it'd be nice to have a fucking budget and not to have to hang lights.

Then I get to go do the morning show and I'm spoiled. You're really, really, really good.

Thank you.

That's why I said morning show. I was hoping you would give me that.
Yeah. Wait, what is the scene everyone shouts? Is it a voice message you leave, or you're leaving a voice message?

I was watching that this morning. Oh, yeah, you're really good.
Anyway, but that's funny for me.

I got to do that, and there's a burrito waiting for me, and they take care of me. And then I do that.
Nice gig. I do that for a few weeks.
And then I'm like, I miss scrapping with my friends.

So that whole grass is greener mentality of ping-ponging back and forth between those two things keeps me relatively healthy. I have to say, this podcast,

I know the world has a podcast.

Maybe this could turn into a murder thing. I wonder.

So easily.

Crossover episode.

Actually, guess what, Mark?

So congratulations.

But this does it for me, too. I love acting.
I love acting. I'll never not want to act.
Well, I'm not sure. But this is fun.
I wanted to honestly ask you, because

I watched you kind of get very prolific in the last 10 years or so.

And if there was a conscious decision impetus, or it was just more serendipity of, oh, my God, I did this. And here comes the boom of television and I'm back in and I'm enjoying it.

Or, or was there a part of you that had any existential moment where you're like, damn it, I missed this. I want to do it.
I want to do it all the time because you're so busy.

Yeah, you know this. You know, you appear busier than you really are.
Sure.

You know, you can spend three months making something and not anymore. Jesus.
You spend three months making a Netflix show and boom. Yep.
It's out there and the world's seen it. And yeah, next.

And this actually suffices. I don't, I am so happy.
What happened in the last seven years is I met Mike Shur.

Yeah. Granted, the first thing he said to me is you're one of my favorite comedic actors ever.
So I'll give you, he did that right off the bat thing that seems to work with me. Yeah.
Yep.

Noted. But boy, did I listen to him when he described the good place and I couldn't even quite recreate what he was talking about, but I wanted to be with that brain, that

purposefulness. Well, he's special.
He's very special. And so I got to work with him.
And so working

Trying to find the giggle, trying to, you know, I do love that process. I I love, every once in a while, it's nice to go do Fargo or something, but I do love thoughtful, funny that makes you think.

Yeah. And he does that so well.
And so I still get to work with him. I've done two seasons on this Netflix where, what is it?

The man on the inside. Yeah.
And Mary Elizabeth. Yeah.
So it's, yes. So it's really,

it's also him. Yeah, it's him.
You know? Yeah. I think that's great.
All right.

I have to ask you one more question, if that's okay. Please.
Okay.

When I was talking about my father

wanting to make sure he had enough money for us and work himself into the grave, your eyes blew open. No one, I mean, if those of you who are watching it, they're going to look back and see it.

But you, something deeply resonated in there. And I remember enough of talking with you when we were more in each other's orbits making the movie 10 years ago that,

you know, part of you taking CSI

was thinking about taking care of everyone. So I want to know.

Can I tell you the CSI moment? Yeah. Yes.

Sitting

with we're with, we're blessed.

We met the families on Martha's Vineyard. This is my way of saying we have a house in Martha's Vineyard, but we were thinking, oh, we're going to have to sell it.

And some friends said, oh, you can't sell it.

I said, well, we're trying not to. I'm just hoping something,

something happens. But let's finish dinner and go across the street and go to the movie.
The lights come down. My phone lights up.
I go, I just have to take this from my manager.

And my manager says, do you want to be on CSI? And I went, yes.

Hung up the phone and watched the movie. Yes.
So it was a blessing. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done because

it's not a giggle, you know, and you're looking at charred corpses. But I love the actors and the writers and the crews and the camaraderie.
I loved it. It was a good big deal.

But, you know, I'm going to challenge you briefly on the false modesty there. That wasn't just for you and your house.
You take care of quite a few people. No, we do.
We do.

Mary and I have no business brain at all.

You know, if we save money because something was on a sale, we go, we just saved $10.

Let's go scroll. Good blow it, baby.

You know, we do not have that brain at all. So I also, so I think my motto in life is it's just make enough that you can be stupid

about money. Okay.
And the truth is, I love work.

I want to knock on wood. I want to be able to find out what it's funny, how what it's like to be funny at any age I'm getting.

So I want to keep going and going and going until I don't work.

You know, I mean,

you know what? It's going those friends, friends going back to your friends

you know you want to go make something because those relate for me relationships around work are the most delicious it's so interesting i find that too i've actually questioned whether it was unhealthy of me that my favorite way to commune with people and my friends is actually in the creative process and i'm like why don't i just ask them to dinner we could just do that but i actually prefer that particular concert i haven't actually looked into that but i i haven't had that reflected back to me the way you just said it before that's That's me.

There's something about it. Yeah.
So may we both all work

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All right, a couple more things. Sorry.
All right. I noticed that you did a GoFundMe thing for the fire

victims or people that had to deal with being out of their homes or whatever to get them computers? Am I getting that right? And then Googled it.

We kind of went into this sort of independent filmmaker mode when it all happened because I was noticing they were raising all these monies, but the money, they weren't being deployed because of just the red tape.

And so I was like, well, let's just start. triaging.
That's what you do in independent films. So the first thing I did was

I ran a national gift card drive because everyone was living in hotels.

And so I had people all around the country send me their gift cards that they didn't use or that their mom gave them or whatever. And we got like $100,000 of gift cards to this little P.O.
box.

And I would partner with churches and schools in the area and just say, just get these out, get them into people's hands.

That's brilliant. It was so simple.
I was just like, let's just do it. And a $30 P.O.
box later. And it was just like, bam, you know?

And then from there, I reached out to Amazon and I said, look, you know, these people are starting to move back in their homes. Can you give me some credit?

I'll I'll fulfill some wish lists for people and I'll say Amazon's cool. I'll make you look good.
You know, so they gave us some money. We got some computers through Microsoft.

We got some like Nintendo Switches through some,

you know, for the kids who are missing that stuff. And, and, um,

yeah, it was a really cool way for me to

put some of that energy. And, and I think that,

I think there's just a, there's a part of me

that every now and then questions

because my parent this is this is just being very vulnerable and honest

like

a life of service yeah that is a big part of my route and that i feel like i don't necessarily have haven't strayed from it but um i don't want to be on my deathbed and look back and be like did i really spend my life focusing on my vision for my movies and my you know and so that's a little insurance for me or something like that you know um

and that was a yeah we had a great run with that Well, brilliant. I also loved

for the trans community, the

found footage fund. Yeah, yeah, we set up a 20.
I described that. What does that mean? We set up a $25,000 grant for the,

with the, with the Transgender Film Center, which basically, you know.

Turns out this administration has not been as excited to support trans rights as we might have hoped. So,

you know, I mean, you know what it is. The money that they pay us to do these television shows is so stupid.

It's so stupid. So when my friend Lynn Shelton passed away, we had identified that, you know, when everyone talks about up-and-coming filmmakers, they always say young filmmakers.

But Lynn didn't make her first movie until she was 40. So we set up a grant for her that was in her honor that said, you know, it's the woman of a certain age grant.

So it's for female or non-binary folks over the age of 40 making their first movie. And I said, yeah, this has been really.
Who did that? We, you said?

It's it's me and the northwest film forum my friend josh leonard a bunch of us who loved lynn and so i thought you know this is a great way with very little money we raise a lot of awareness we give a lot of support but here's the coolest part i'm actually tricking these folks um in some way which is

everybody gets an application together to try and make their movie for $25,000. They have to design a movie that can be made for $25,000.

Only one of them wins it, but at least 500 people have a perfectly built movie that can be made for 25 grand.

And then they just go on Kickstarter and Seed and Spark and they raise the money themselves.

So by actually saying one person wins, like 200 of these projects, they feel heard, they feel seen, and they get made. I'm kind of falling for you, Mark.

Hey, man, that's really a big hug. We'll do it off camera.
But that's brilliant. Your entrepreneurial side of you.

That's brilliant. I'm glad you're smart.

First of all, thank you. I'm glad you brought up the entrepreneurial thing because that's, I think, part of the fun of this business for me, too, is I actually like the little gamesmanship.

And everybody's always like, Mark, why are you funding your own projects? You know, why don't you get money? And like, the obvious answer is, yes, I don't want bosses.

I don't want cooks in the kitchen. I want to be able to control it.
But there's this also this little guy in me that's just like, I like the gamesmanship.

I like looking at his little startup and seeing what I can sell it for and turning his

fun. It's really, it is.
It's fun. So, yeah.

I often think sometimes where

brilliant film directors, all of a sudden, are getting $150, $200 million to do something. And part of you goes, gee, I wish somebody gave them $5 million to make the film.

It's funny you mentioned that.

I've never even said this before, but I am actually specifically, I'm working on an initiative right now because filmmakers are so frustrated right now and not being able to make what they want because the industry is taking a downturn.

I want to go back to a bunch of A-list filmmakers and say,

look, I did with Charlie, I got $100,000. I'll fund the whole thing.
You can do whatever you want. I'll teach you how to make a low-budget movie if you forgot, and I'll give you my low-budget cameras.

Do you still remember how to do this? Do you want to do this? I think that a slate of movies like that

would be so fun.

Netflix would

rabbit. They go crazy for that.
Yeah. One more.
One more. Okay.
If you had a,

this is all Airy Fairy, okay.

If you had a North Star, a guiding light, a, you know,

your heart, what, what, what is it that kind of, what is that for you?

Besides the creative side of you.

I will tell you exactly what it is. The most

deeply meaningful and important thing to me in my life is my family, 100%.

But it's a particular version of family.

My parents, my two daughters, my wife, my three dogs, we've gotten into this little habit as we've gotten busier in life where my parents will come and watch my daughter play volleyball at one of her games and they'll come over afterwards at like four o'clock.

And I will order the two family Zanku chicken meal that costs like maybe $45,

even though we could afford to go to all these great restaurants.

And we all share this little chicken meal together and we play some new card game and we gather around the table and we spend about two, two and a half hours together.

And there's some kind of joking and regaling of this story and being in the sandwich of my children and my parents and knowing that this time in my life is limited, you know, when we're going to be able to do this.

It's the first time where I've really ever been able to just be present and so deeply grateful that I am here. Everything else for me has been like, I'm I'm building towards something.

Yes, it's going to be great. You know, it's something about the Zanku Knights.
Like, so that is, that is my North Star.

And I hope to be able to do that in other places with friends, maybe even with my kids and their kids. Like, that would be incredible.

Thank you, buddy. Thank you.

Really appreciate it. This is awesome.
Yeah. I'm glad I caught up with you because I only got you peripherally, to be honest.

And I there was always love and understanding there, but now we got some words on it. Yeah.
Thank you.

Thank you, Mark Duplas. You can watch the morning show on Apple TV Plus and season two of the Creep Tapes begin streaming exclusively on Shudder and AMC Plus on November 14th.
That's it for this week.

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